


Curse on Mankind

by rinthegreat



Category: Free!
Genre: Freeform, M/M, Rinharu Week, Soulmates, more like who trusted me with a keyboard week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2015-11-25
Packaged: 2018-05-03 07:35:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5282282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinthegreat/pseuds/rinthegreat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soulmates are a curse on mankind.  It's said that during every generation, only one pair exists in the entire world.  Of course, since humans have increased in population, the number of paired soulmates have increased as well.  If the statistics are to be believed, though, the number is still in the double digits despite the 7 billion people on the planet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Curse on Mankind

**Author's Note:**

> RinHaru Week 2015 Day 3: Magnetism (Soulmates)
> 
> I don't know what the fuck this is.

            Soulmates are a curse on mankind.  It's said that during every generation, only one pair exists in the entire world.  Of course, since humans have increased in population, the number of paired soulmates have increased as well.  If the statistics are to be believed, though, the number is still in the double digits despite the 7 billion people on the planet.

            They learn about it in class in elementary school, and all the girls get excited.  They run up to guys in other classes, looking them straight in the eye, touching their hands, trying to trick them into speaking, everything they can think of to form a bond.  A bond, though, like this cannot be forced.  It's created, even if the two in the bond resist.

 

 

            “Nanase,” Sato asks one day during lunch, interrupting his silent conversation with Makoto, “would you like to eat lunch with us?”  Behind her, several of her friends are glancing over, giggling.  The other guys in the class shake their heads, visibly relieved that Haru's the target today.

            He fixes her with a glare.  “No.”  She slinks back, rejected, and Makoto chastises him.

            “You should be nicer to them, Haru-chan.”  His tone is still gentle, and he doesn’t look all that mad.

            Haru shrugs it off.  “I don’t want to be anyone’s soulmate.”  It’s unlikely any of them have a soulmate, anyway.  It’s unlikely anyone in the entire prefecture has one.

 

 

            There’s a couple living in Tokyo, Syaoran and Sakura, who are the youngest couple ever recorded to have formed a soul-bond, at just ten years old.  Most of them didn’t usually meet until their late teens, early twenties at the earliest.  And some never met until after they had grown old and already made families of their own.

            Soulmates?  More like a ruined life.

 

 

            A week later they meet Rin.

            It’s not so much a meeting as being caught in a whirlwind.  He spots the redhead at a meet, and the next thing he knows the guy is joining the Iwatobi Swim Club and transferring to their elementary school.

            He’s too loud, too excitable, too focused on him, and Haru avoids him like the plague the first week.  He stops eating lunch at his desk, disappearing instead so Rin can’t find him.  He doesn’t know why he does it.  There are plenty of people who annoy Haru, and he usually just ignores him.  With Rin he feels like he needs to get as far away as possible.  Japan is too small a country.

            So he eats elsewhere, swims in a different lane, and is always at the pool before the other boy can get there.  Always stays late when he knows Rin has to leave.  Eye contact is avoided, he does his best to tune Rin out and doesn’t say anything to him in return.

            Makoto stops by his house after a few days to check on him.  In his panic to avoid Rin, Haru had been unintentionally avoiding his best friend as well.  “Do you hate Matsuoka?”  Makoto asks him, and Haru grits his teeth.  Even just hearing the name is enough to put him on edge.  “Haru-chan?”

            But Haru doesn’t know the answer.  Not really.  He’s been avoiding Rin, so he thinks he must hate him.  That’s what it probably looks like from the outside.  Inside though…inside is different.  Every word Rin says flows through Haru’s veins like warm honey.  The sound of his voice alone is like the water, rising and falling in waves.

            Rin’s smile is sunlight; if Haru stares at it too long, he’s sure he’ll go blind.

            So he shrugs off the question, no longer wanting to talk about it, and Makoto changes the subject.

 

 

            Like everything with Rin, when it happens, it’s violent.  Haru’s climbing out of the pool earlier than normal one practice.  “That last time trial was a new record, Haru-chan,” Makoto smiles, helping him out of the water.

            “You’re amazing, Nanase!”  There’s a harsh sting of a slap on his back, and Haru makes the mistake of looking over.  Rin’s hand is still hovering on his shoulder blade, smile blinding as usual, and Haru accidentally looks into his eyes. 

            Something stirs in him then, a rumbling like an earthquake internal to his body, and a missing wall of his heart slides into place with a thud.  The shaking stops, the finality of it all causing Haru to blink.  He can feel his heart beating loudly in his chest, the same tempo as the pulse of the hand still on his back.

            Their eyes widen at the same time, but Rin’s mouth is the only one to drop open.  “Oh,” the redhead breathes, and Haru can sense their pulses quickening in time.  “Nanase, you’re –“

            He runs.

            Haru barely manages to slow down enough to grab his swim bag, but he keeps running.  He sprints all the way home in just his swim suit, bare feet slapping on the ground as he goes.  He pounds up the steps to his house and slams the door behind him, his pulse beating alone in his ears, the phantom ghost of Rin’s hand still present on his back.

            He sinks down in the tub, letting the water fall over him, legs jello.  The water isn’t warm yet, but he hardly notices.  Haru closes his eyes and concentrates, as if he can will it away.  Distantly, he feels a bubble in his mind.  Like a second presence.  He pokes it, trying to pop it.  Drive it away.  Anything.

            It doesn’t move.

 

 

            Haru tries to avoid Rin at school the next day, but the redhead has him pegged.  One of the many downsides of being bonded, he discovers.  Rin corners him at lunch on the roof, out of breath from having sprinted there.  He stands in front of the door, blocking Haru’s only escape.

            “Stop…running…”  Rin pants, hands on knees.  In truth, Haru hadn’t been running; just using shortcuts and obstacles to make it harder for Rin to follow him.  “We need to talk,” he says, standing up straight finally.

            Haru side-eyes the railing, wondering how hard it would be to scale down the sides of the building.  There’s a warmth around his forearm, a tingling running up and down his veins like they’re spiked with something.  His heartrate immediately calms, matching the one against his arm.  He twitches out of the grasp, a string of unwillingness snapping in his brain.  He’d dropped his guard.

            “Nanase, we’re bon –“

            “Don’t!”  Haru exclaims, his hands fisted at his sides.  He’s avoiding looking at Rin, but his body unconsciously turns to face his, and he hates it.  He hates that Rin makes him warm.  He hates that their heartrates match.  He hates _everything_ about this _._

            Rin shrinks back from him.  “You hate me that much?”

            The bond forces guilt down his throat, jerking him forward with an apology on his lips, but Rin just backs away from him.  “Rin…”  The other’s first name slips out, an accident.  Rin’s face brightens instantly, a warmth settling in Haru’s chest.

            “You called me by my first name!”  He grins, wide and bright, blinding Haru to everything around them.

 

 

            There’s no getting rid of Rin after that.  He hangs around, smirking when he thinks Haru’s just pretending to want to be rid of him.  He’s not pretending.  He’s _not_.

            They touch every chance they can.  For Rin, it’s intentional.  He slings his arm over Haru’s shoulders, nudges him during lunch, slaps his back after every practice.  Haru’s body sings, the bond tightening with every point of contact.

            For him, though, the touching is still unintentional.  He accidentally walks too close to Rin, brushing their shoulders together.  Their fingers slide against each other when he reaches for his pencil.  Unintentional.  Unwanted.

 

 

            Haru falls in a river that winter, nearly drowning in his fevered state.  He wakes up later, not remembering any details of what had happened.  All he can recall is being irritated with Rin, par for the course, and a lone scarf floating in the half frozen water.  He’s still cold. 

            When he looks over, it’s Makoto, not Rin, watching him.

 

 

            Haru caves and swims in the relay with Rin.  He tells himself, he tells everyone, that he doesn’t care about this sight Rin claims to be able to show him.  He’s not even curious.

            But then they’re standing under the cherry tree, and Rin’s announcing to them all that he’s going to Australia.  He didn’t even think to talk to Haru about it first.  A dark thread uncoils itself in Haru’s heart, even when he sees the sight.  It’s not so impressive.

            Except that it is.

 

 

            His heart is starting to thaw to Rin, the bond maturing slowly, even as they keep it a secret from everyone around them, but he never gets the chance to tell him.  Before he knows it, Rin’s in Australia, leaving Haru alone in Japan with nothing but their joint nightmares.

            As it turns out, if the dreams are bad enough, they can pass over the bond.  Same with emotions.  Haru feels every failure Rin feels, but none of the triumphs.  More evidence that the bond is just a curse.  His heart freezes over again, convinced that nothing good can come of something which only transmits the poor emotions.

 

 

            It isn’t until Rin comes back that winter, that Haru realizes he _had_ been feeling all the strong positive emotions Rin had been having.  He grabs Rin’s sleeve when the redhead tries to run away, a strange role reversal.  “I quit,” Rin whispers, dark and cold.  Haru lets him go.

            He doesn’t feel anything from Rin after that.

 

 

            It’s years later, when Haru stops swimming because he’d hurt Rin, that they find out the Iwatobi Swim Club is being torn down.  Nagisa reappears in their lives, like a bolt of sugar-charged lightning, and before Haru can say much of anything, they’re at the building with memories he’d rather just forget.

            Haru feels him before he sees him.  The thrum of the bond he hadn’t felt in nearly three years sings through his veins and he stops short at the sound of footsteps.  His eyes widen in recognition before Nagisa or Makoto figure it out.  “Haru,” his voice is deeper, tinged with something Haru doesn’t recognize.  “You’re still hanging out with these guys?”

            They don’t race, because there’s no pool, and Haru’s not a fool enough to let it slip by him how Rin avoids contact of any kind with him.  He wonders how long Rin’s been back in Japan that he hasn’t noticed.  That night, lying in his bathtub, he actively feels for the bond.  It’s there, humming just beneath the surface, same as always no matter what either of them want, and he can _feel_ that Rin’s closer to him than he had been all during middle school.

 

 

            The thought of racing Rin again, of feeling both their pulses pounding in time as they push each other faster and faster, is enough to force Haru into joining the swim team.  He reaches for their bond every night, leaning against the bond and letting the warmth seep into his skin, his muscles, his bones.  It turns into a sort of sick addiction, something he can’t fall asleep without.

            But Rin doesn’t feel the same.  He actively avoids Haru any time they’re near each other and doesn’t join the swim team until a few weeks into the school year for some reason.  It isn’t until Rin beats him in a race, when he declares that he’s never going to race Haru again, that he realizes his heart had thawed again.

            It’s just his body that’s cold now.

            That night he feels more alone than before.  The bubble isn’t as warm as it used to be, and instead of leaning against it, he huddles a little ways away from it, shivering.

 

 

            Rin almost collapses his next race.  Haru’s on his feet, sprinting down before he even knows what he’s doing, but he stops short, Rin’s declaration ringing in his ears.  He doesn’t want to swim without Rin.  He doesn’t want to do anything without Rin.  He just wants the redhead to go back to his carefree childhood self, wrapping his arm around Haru’s shoulders and matching their heartrates without noticing.  He curls in on himself, hating the bond for entirely different reasons now.

 

 

            He finds Rin in the courtyard of their old elementary school, exactly where he thought he’d be.  The bond isn’t a homing beacon, but sometimes Rin’s emotions are.  Haru tries not to be too surprised when the other attempts to punch him.

            When the fight drains out of him, Rin’s shoulders fall dripping down along with his tears.

            “You don’t know what it’s like,” Rin sobs, slumped over him, “to be bonded to someone who hates you.”

            Haru sits up, reaching, and wipes away a tear.  More follow.  “Rin…”

            “I’m sorry, Haru.  I’m _so_ sorry…”

            He doesn’t want to hear any more.  Doesn’t want to see Rin cry.  Doesn’t want apologies for something neither of them could help.

            Doesn’t want to pretend he’s the same as in elementary school.

            Rin collapses against him when their lips separate, their heartrates synced where their chests meet.  Haru finds Rin’s fingers on the ground, wraps his hand around them.  “Swim with me,” he says.  It’s not a request.  Not a demand.  Not _swim for me_.  Not _swim for the team_.  It just is.

            He’s no good at saying _I love you_.

 

 

            Rin swims in the relay with them, while Rei cheers on the side, and when it’s over, when Haru shows Rin a sight _he’s_ never seen, Rin finally comes back to him.  Reluctantly, he releases Rin, lets the others share in the moment.  But after, when they’re clean and Rin’s made his apologies to his team, Haru meets Rin at the corner by the old Iwatobi swim club.  The sun is setting over the sea, but Rin’s smile brings midday back again.

            Haru laces his fingers between Rin’s and leads him back home.  Where he belongs.

 


End file.
